The Daily Novel

Pfisterr groaned and fell over in agony. He had never known such pain, and he realized he needed to reveal some classified secrets to his tormentor, if only to stay alive a little longer. “I wasn’t in charge of recruiting the shooters. That was Vackland. He went through Harvey and his ZR-RIFLE program. Probably one team from Europe. Maybe a domestic team too. Probably three teams in all. You gotta understand…the masterminds were higher-ups. Not me.”

“What was your role?” asked Hayes as he swung the hammer menacingly near Pfisterr’s head.

“I set up Oswald. He was already being constructed…”

“Constructed?”

“Being given a portfolio as a political nut case. Defecting to Russia…coming back. Shooting at Walker. He was carrying out assignments, but he didn’t know why. There was always some cover story. When he came back from Russia, we placed him with the white Russians in Dallas—DeMohrenschildt. He handed him off to Marcello and Banister in New Orleans. He was told to infiltrate a plot against the president—Ferrie and Shaw and the Cubans were false sponsors. We brought him back to Dallas and placed him with the Raskes. She was told to get him a job.” He tilted his head. “Here,” he said, indicating the Depository. “She really had nothing to do with it. It was more cover. D. H. Byrd put him here.”

“Who?”

“Friend of Bolt’s and Hutchison’s…the Dallas oil cartel. They owned the city. Someone named Wallace, LBJ’s guy, and David Morales planted the rifle and the shells on the sixth floor. Byrd was having some work done that week. Morales and Wallace got access to the building disguised as some sort of workers. Secret Service got the prints on the gun at the funeral home.”

“How’d you get the Secret Service to go along with it?”

“Just a few key players.”

“What about the home movie, the Zapruder film? Why was that allowed to go public? You know that’s the most incriminating evidence. The president’s head snapped backwards. Last I checked, chief, that means one thing—he was shot from the front.”

“Zapruder was supposed to be there. In that spot. Don’t ask me how; I just know he worked for Dresser Industries. Check into who owns Dresser…who bought Dresser…check into Heynes’ holdings…they’re CIA fronts. They wanted that movie…as a trophy, a remembrance. Bolt bought a copy. It was also supposed to be doctored to show shots from behind. That’s why all the blood and brain and skull matter fly forward. Our guys did that…at the Photographic Interpretation Center.”

“I’ll be damned. Why go to all that trouble?”

“The plan was to have solid evidence of shots from the rear…to frame the patsy…in two key areas—1) the photographs…notice how Zapruder was the only one taking pictures from the north side of Elm Street. His film was the only recorded view from that side. 2) the autopsy photos…were…” Pfisterr almost lost consciousness.

“Don’t pass out on me, Dan. There’s so much more I want to know.” He slapped Pfisterr to keep him conscious. “Was the coffin empty when Air Force One landed in Washington that night?”

“No!” cried Pfisterr.

“Wrong answer, Dan. Actually it was a trick question. Do you know why it was a trick question, Dan?” Hayes raised the hammer over the blubbering spymaster.

“Yes…don’t hit me…yeah, because…there were two coffins. They put the body in an expensive pinkish-gray one in Dallas, but…but…he arrived in a different one altogether at Bethesda—a plain, war-zone shipping casket…zipped in a body bag.”

“Why was that, Dan?”

“For security…for…”

“Bullshit,” bellowed Hayes. He raised the hammer again.

“Okay…okay…the body was…the body was altered…at Walter Reed before the official autopsy at Bethesda. Check into a Dallas mortician named Gutmann. He did the body work. They flew him into Washington and back on a supersonic jet.” Pfisterr’s face was pale, and he nearly passed out from the pain.

Hayes shifted topics. “How’d you get all those Nazis into the country so easily? Tell me about Dornberger. You were there in Toulouse, weren’t you? You saw him beat that kid to death right in front of his mother.”

Pfisterr shot Hayes a look of surprise, as if to say, How did you find out about that?

“I’ve been reading up on you, Dan, or is it Eb today…or Mr. Daniels?”

Hayes realized that Pfisterr was about to pass out, so he stuffed Pfisterr’s mouth with the handkerchief and delivered another jolt of pain to keep him awake. He swung the hammer suddenly and expertly at Pfisterr’s crotch. Pfisterr’s face turned shades of violet and gray as he rolled over on his side.

Hayes waited a few minutes to let the pain subside. He knew Pfisterr was not going to stay conscious much longer, so he had to get the information he had really come for quickly. He removed the handkerchief. “How did you dispose of Dornberger’s body? And why?”

“That was…easy. Coupla assets flew in to Scott Air Force Base on one of our jets. They were going to kill him…they found him dead already. They took the corpse. We flew him back to Germany and buried him. Didn’t…didn’t want any questions. Didn’t know who killed him…didn’t care.”

“Well, I got some shocking news for you, Dan. The daughter of Chris Hughes killed him. You remember Hughes, don’t you? The fellow soldier you set up in Toulouse. Was that your first act of treason? I suppose it was.”

Pfisterr was dumbfounded but still skeptical. “How do you know this?”

“Because I’m the detective who investigated it, you stupid prick. I guess you CIA guys don’t know everything, huh? But that’s not all, Dan. Father Carney was the best friend I had on this earth…and the best man I ever knew.” Hayes’ eyes watered as he tightened his grip on the hammer.

For the first time in his life, Pfisterr was on the wrong end of fate’s cruel irony. His past had finally caught up with him, and Hayes was the avenging angel sent to make him pay for his sins. The church service Pfisterr had attended only an hour before seemed to have happened in another lifetime. The solace provided by the Lord’s assurance of Pfisterr’s righteousness was gone. His world of moral absolutes, in which socialism was depraved, and capitalism was wholesome and pure, was shaken. Before this otherwise innocuous spring Sunday, Pfisterr had thought of himself as a hero in life’s drama, bringing about God’s and America’s vision, which were one and the same–that of an orderly, free-market society, with a ruling class doing what was best for its compliant and uninformed subjects. But his universe had been turned inside-out by this overweight cop from nowhere who had failed to grasp the big picture and who had the manners and language of a common dock worker. Hayes was nothing more than a coarse Irish cop, probably descended from potato-famine immigrants, clinging to some childish grudges.

It occurred, then, to Pfisterr that what he was undergoing was only a test from God. A test of his faith in America and the virtuousness of his career and beliefs. After all, God had made him one of the privileged, one who not only served the ruling class but came to be a part of it. He knew secrets of America that few others did. He was granted power to control events that few others had. He was protected by the cloak of the hidden oligarchy and was invulnerable to the weepy disgruntlement of the lower classes. Certainly, a Catholic commoner like Hayes was not meant to get the best of him. That’s all this was, a test; Pfisterr convinced himself he would prevail as he always had–through cunning and an undying belief that he knew what was best for America. Though he was in severe pain and had temporarily been humbled by Hayes, he was about to turn the tables on his tormentor.

“Give me the papers; I’ll sign,” he told Hayes. What difference did it make? Pfisterr could easily claim that the signature and the document were forged by a crazed ex-cop who delusionally blamed his failures on the CIA. A false dossier could be constructed. Hayes could be given a history of mental illness and painted as a conspiracy whacko by the company’s psychiatric assets. This cop is not going to defeat me, thought Pfisterr. I’ll find a way out.

Hayes was suspicious of Pfisterr’s resignation, but he wanted to finish the business quickly. He uncuffed Pfisterr so that Pfisterr could sign all five letters, and Hayes stuffed them in his satchel. He then ordered Hayes to start climbing the fire escape to the roof of the Depository.

When Hayes gave him this order, Pfisterr immediately recognized it as a sign from God. The one advantage Pfisterr had over the cop was that he had a better knowledge of the Depository. Pfisterr had walked every inch of it in November 1963 and knew all the escape routes. One was another fire escape on the west side of the building that Hayes, thought Pfisterr, either did not know existed or assumed was unusable. Even though he was injured and in excruciating pain, Pfisterr knew he could move faster than this overweight cop and make the necessary leap from the last step of the fire escape, which extended only to the second floor window near the northwest corner of the Depository, to the ground. While the cop was busy trying to find the other escape, climbing down it, and deciding whether to make the leap, Pfisterr would be long gone.

“Go slowly,” commanded Hayes, pointing the gun at Pfisterr. His intent was to get Pfisterr onto the roof of the building and force him to jump off or push him off, so that it appeared to be suicide. The signed suicide notes would then be mailed to various “honest” media outlets or law enforcement agencies in the hopes of exposing Pfisterr’s and the CIA’s operations.

With Hayes just a flight below for the first four stories, Pfisterr climbed the steps as if he could barely endure the agony of the ascent. He was trying to sandbag the cop. As Pfisterr neared the top, he suddenly scrambled up the last flight of steps. He lurched over the edge of the building and landed on his good shoulder. He raced for the west side of the building, intending to scurry down its fire escape and leave the cop behind.

Hayes did not flinch when Pfisterr scrambled up onto the roof. He knew, from weeks of scouting the location, that there was no other way down. A rooftop door leading to the interior of the building was locked from the outside. There was no other fire escape; the one that existed on the west side of the building in 1963 had been removed. Hayes figured that Pfisterr, not realizing the only way back down was the way they had come up, was fleeing for another exit that did not exist. The cop smirked at the thought of outwitting one of “America’s best,” the Skull-and-Bones prick from Yale.

As Hayes reached the top step, he peered across the roof just in time to see Pfisterr swing his leg across the edge of the Depository, desperately feeling for the imaginary iron ladder. Hayes caught one last glimpse of Pfisterr’s smug expression—the expression that had informed all his victims that he could get away with anything and no one could ever touch him—before it turned to momentary horror as he lost his balance and knew, in one fleeting moment before his demise, that fate and retribution had finally caught up with him. He plunged seven stories and landed head-first. His skull was smashed like a watermelon that had been beaten with a sledgehammer. Mere yards from where the CIA had pulled off one of its dirtiest crimes, one of its planners—and one of the men who had lifted the lid on Nazi Germany’s sewer and permitted its fascist rats to infest America, and then protected its progeny and fostered its flagitious form of government—died an appropriately gruesome death.